Collage of newspaper articles, essays, reviews and interviews with Joni Mitchell that chronologically follows four decades of her life in spotlight. Not coincidentally, it feels like a kaleidoscope of different colours as she metamorphosed and changed with times just as her music changed and grew far beyond initial Laurel Canyon chapter - at first, initially articles lumped her together with Joan Baez and Judy Collins school of girl-with-a-guitar, when critics were falling over themselves to praise this new, fresh face in the playground. Very soon, her name came to be mentioned in the same breath with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen as she moved further away from gentle folkie smoke rings that endeared her to the late 1960s audiences. Even further on, the reviewers and critics were gradually growing confused with Mitchell's musical adventures and experiments until she lived long enough to enjoy the renaissance and (belated) shower of awards, although I still believe that neither music industry nor audiences (beyond hardcore fan base) ever genuinely embraced her later work - in her defence, Mitchell is fiercely independent artist who is too intelligent, opinionated and outspoken to ever accept rules of the pop music market, its demands and strategies.
Considering that handful of her earliest albums were what initially cemented her legend, its a bit confusing that Mitchell now dismiss them as twee and coy - even if one tries to understand her impatience when journalists grouped her together with Baez and Collins (both highly respected, talented artists) its exactly because of albums like "Ladies of the Canyon" and "Blue" that audiences embraced her so passionately, because her music and poetry back than spoke to the millions. "Court and Spark" was simultaneously the highlight and the beginning of the end, as from now on her work decidedly took cryptic, experimental turn - to this day Mitchell fumes and rants against music machinery that (in her opinion) unchivalrously and treacherously dismissed her later work and forced her into oblivion, but to be frank, no matter how beautifully crafted and sophisticated these albums were, I just don't hear the singles there and if I was recording company executive, I really wouldn't know how on earth to advertise, promote and sell something so intensely eccentric.
At first, the articles relentlessly repeat the same informations (polio/Saskatchewan/folk circuit) but later one can feel the curiosity of certain journalists who had intelligence to approach her music from different perspective - around the time of "Hejira" and "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" the articles and reviews gradually became more interesting and several interviews are very enlightening indeed: apparently Mitchell considered quitting the business long time ago and when her all-covers album "Both Sides Now" finally appeared it was not (as some suggested) because of lack of original material but something Mitchell was unable to do earlier, as her recording contracts not allowed it. It's just funny how I had this book around forever and than read it in two days, once I got inspired.
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